Robert wrote to his 19-year-old sweetheart Clara on 17 March 1838: ‘It was like an echo of something you once said, when you wrote to me that “I sometimes seemed to you like a child” – in short, I felt as though I were in pinafores again and knocked off around 30 quaint things, from which I selected 12 and called them “Scenes from Childhood”. You will enjoy them, but you’ll certainly have to forget yourself as a virtuoso.’